Oscar showed how the bed folded up at day, and down at night. When the bed was down, Theophilus sat on it and was momentarily more comfortable in his joints. Oscar sat opposite him in a low chair with a carved back, but he could not be still and jigged his knee and played with his hands.

It was then that Theophilus gave Oscar the second present. It was tiny, wrapped in white tissue and wrapped with a black ribbon. It looked ominous, and the black (some leftover mourning ribbon from Theophilus's cabinet drawer) was perhaps in honour of the woman from whose womb the present had kept it, because it was said-superstitiously, of course-that such

Oscar and Lucinda

a thing would protect the child from drowning.

"Here," he said, holding it out with a hand that shook visibly. "It is your caul." And when Oscar did not understand: "From off your little head."

He drew his handkerchief from his pocket and unleashed the fragrance of Mrs Williams's ironing board. He blew his nose, not looking at his son. He was remembering a child and wife in a Devon lanemyrtles, perfumed hedges, luscious red mud, which caked so thickly on their boots that their feet became heavy and padded as creatures in a dream.

Oscar put the caul in the soldering box. It did not fit easily, but he crammed it in, jamming it around the bottle of acid, squashing it against the little box of resin, crushing the paper, kinking the mourning ribbon. He did not wish to harm it. He was much moved by the present. He clasped the lid shut and made a fuss of arranging the box on a long shelf behind his head. When he at last turned to face his father, his own expression was wary, hooded.

He was frightened of Theophilus's emotions. He could not name them. He could not guess their shapes and colours, and although he would spend the rest of his life wondering what these emotions were, now, when it appeared likely that they might be laid before him, as bare as knives and forks on a white tablecloth, he shrank from them.

He remembered his father's skin, that part of it where the black beard grew thin across the cheek, from there into the rippled mud-flat bay beneath the eyes. The skin looked like something that had been wrapped up too long. And there was a smell, a disturbing and familiar smell, which he recognized like the smell of a family home when it has not been lived in for a season. This combination of familiarity and distance was most disturbing. Also there were noises. They had been sounding for some time: electric megaphones. It would soon be time to go. Oscar felt the water stretching out endlessly behind his neck. The lines on the celluloid sliced through it, cut it into neat squares, which bled and joined again, were sliced, rejoined, sliced, rejoined. Oscar did something jolly and scuttled out on to the promenade.

The air smelt of new paint and electricity. There was also something vaporous, like brandy, and leather, like a St James's shoemaker in the week before Ascot. Through all this there threaded, subtle but insistent, the smell of the sea. Oscar imagined he detected movement in Leviathan. He stood outside his cabin door.

18/1

Who Can Open the Doors of His Face?

His left hand grasped the wall rail. He grinned at Melody Clutterbuck. Miss Clutterbuck barely saw the death's-head grimace. It was the father-he in the doorway behind the son-whom she was anxious about. She watched him creep from the top-tier cabin and thought he gazed around as from a pulpit. When he walked it was slowly; she did not think to attribute this to pain.

She stood and moved towards the other stair, like a customer in a bank who feels there are bank robbers in the queue in front of her but is not quite confident of her intuition. Thus she did not escape the embarrassment. She stood still, pale in the face, blood mottling the plump hands, the hands clutching the gloves she had removed for tea. She saw the elder Hopkins drop to his knees. She thought she heard a groan. She thought: Evangelicals do not kneel!

She saw a steward begin to move towards the old man, and then he stopped. The praying mantis went down beside his father. Miss Clutterbuck imagined she heard the thump of bony knees on a carpet that should have been thick enough to muffle anything. She caught, just then, her fiance's eyes, but only for a second because he-oh, you fool, you fool-was aping the fundamentalists. She looked to the Strattons but he was already on his shiny knees and she was lowering herself, resting her large hand on his shoulder. And now she saw strangers as well, those who had nothing to do with their pathetic party. A short man who smelt of wet animals came and knelt beside her. There was something horribly intimate in the sight of his balding crown. Others, some with crystal wine glasses in their hands, followed suit. The stewards remained standing, but even they folded their hands in front of them and bowed their heads like so many Baptists. Outside the megaphone continued blaring, but inside it was very quiet, and Melody Clutterbuck, not wishing to be thought a Dissenter herself, knelt.

There was a long silence, a minute, perhaps two, before Theophilus Hopkins, FRS, began his prayer.

"Oh, Lord God," he began. His voice was tangled. He began again: "Oh, Lord God, this is my son."

The next pause was shorter, but felt more painful.

"These are his friends, and fellow voyagers."

You could hear Mrs Stratton's asthmatic breathing. She was swaying a little on her knees. Mr Stratton rubbed her back.

"Oh, Lord my God," said Oscar's father, the deep voice so broken that many did not hear the last words: "What can we do?"

Oscar and Lucinda

Then he was on his feet. He touched his son, so briefly, a brush so light Oscar would always wonder if he had not invented it himself. He walked up the stairs quickly and in pain. He went out of sight with a peculiar hobble: fast, short steps and a tightly screwed up face. The congregation rose slowly, and were not keen to meet each other's eye. Down on the wharf, Theophilus Hopkins prayed again. He stood before Leviathan and a crowd gathered around him. But the scales of the giant were fitted tight together and the sound of his voice did not reach the son who would not leave the promenade.

Oscar waited for his father to return. And while he waited, while it became clear, even to him, that his father had left forever, he could look nowhere but towards the busy bulkhead through which the old man had departed. A great pain took possession of his heart and clamped around his lungs so that although he stood, in the midst of his friends, with his red lips parted, no air came to rescue him.

He thought: I will never again look upon his wise old face.

He thought: I have been a poor son to leave him all alone. He embraced Mrs Stratton, shook hands with Wardley-Fish, Miss Clutterbuck, Mr Col ville and the pupils from the school. There was a great fuss of sirens, bells, fireworks. Lucinda, watching from above, wondered why the clergyman sat by himself on the bright red chaise-longue.

Oscar was caught in the web of his phobia in the geometrical centre of the ship. He imagined everyone had gone.

49

The System

Mr Stratton gave Oscar a fright. He pushed his face close up. He did not give a warning. He came creeping over the carpet with one last glass of complimentary sherry in his hand. The boy did not look up, but Mr Stratton did not imagine himself invisible. Quite the

The System

contrary. He was the only visitor left on the promenade. He had been requested, twice already, to leave the ship. He felt his defiance bathed in limelight.

He imagined the young man waiting for him. It was only natural in his view, for there were matters too long postponed which must be spoken of between them. He had expected them to be spoken of earlier, but as they had not been, they must be spoken of now. He was a man with a nervous respect for clocks and timetables. Bells, alarms, sirens, all had a direct effect upon his physiology. But he would not be cowed by sirens today. They could row him ashore if necessary. Mr Stratton sat on the settee three feet from Oscar. He placed his sherry on its back rail. He balanced it nicely there and really did not care that the alcohol might scar the varnish. Oscar did not see him. All Oscar could see was the image cast on his retina by his departed papa's face, most particularly that pennysized area of vulnerable skin beneath the eyes.